If Eknath Shinde once stepped back from the top post of the State and become number two, this is his time to wrest the country's top city's mayoral post in lieu of what he thinks to be the great sacrifice he made after 2024 polls. Photo: X @mieknathshinde
From Vajpayee to Shinde: The enduring politics of hotel hopping
Eknath Shinde falls back on decades-old strategy to shield councillors from rival alliances in a fractured mayoral verdict in Mumbai
Mumbai now awaits to unveil its mayoral bet. And before a vote to elect the new mayor takes place or a consensus is built several councillors are reported to be holed up in rooms deep inside a five-star hotel in Bandra.
The possibility of these councillors taking different ways in the event of more than one contestant trying their luck for Mayor has made deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena wary. So, the 29 electors of the Mumbai Mayor, who belong to the Shinde faction have been safely ensconced in a hotel.
What Vajpayee did
But this kind of hotel politics in Maharashtra or even in the country is now as old as the coalition politics. It reached its peak in the time the NDA-1 government led by late Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Vajpayee's first tryst with the post of PM had begun way back in 1996. But it ended abruptly in just 13 days of his first attempt. He marked his resignation from the post by saying, "I will never touch even with a tong any government which is made by breaking and cobbling up majority at the cost of other parties."
It took two more elections, both mid-term, for Vajpayee to get firmly on the saddle at the Centre for a full five-year term.
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Once reminded of his 1996 remark, Vajpayee shot back to justify his later efforts to seize the top office again by asserting, "All the morals cannot be for him (read the BJP) alone."
Tit-for-tat politics
Soon, a tit-for-tat politics began with both the BJP and its rivals vying to outsmart each other at making inroads into other parties. Those days BJP's point-man from Maharashtra, Pramod Mahajan, mostly saw to it that nothing goes wrong to rob Vajpayee of his chance to complete his full term in office till 2004.
So, once Mahajan was asked during the rule of NDA-1 by reporters and this was amid an important Assembly election to clarify what if the results throw up a hung Vidhan Sabha.
His reply though off video cameras was – "two chartered planes are being kept ready for the day of the result". It was met with silence on the part of the questioners. Obviously, he meant that some of the newly-elected members could well be airlifted and lodged in the safe havens of a resort or hotel in a distant State, till they accept what his party was to offer them in return for catapulting it to power.
Mahajan is no more but Eknath Shinde is, indeed, a product of the kind of politics that took root during the times of NDA-1.
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In those days its practitioner justified it by citing what in 1979, Congress leader Bhajan Lal had done to wreck Devi Lal's Janata Party government in Haryana. No similar crossovers by legislators do surprise anybody any more, nor do these need any justification ever since.
Hotel hopping
So, the current deputy CM owes his rise to the heights of power in Maharashtra to days or rather weeks of hotel hopping only in the recent past. He herded MLAs loyal to him from the erstwhile undivided Shiv Sena led by the late Balasaheb Thackeray's son Uddhav to as far as Gujarat and Assam.
From Guwahati, he flew back to Mumbai, to drive to Raj Bhavan and become Maharashtra Chief Minister.
Shinde's sacrifice
It was later that he had to reconcile to the post of deputy CM since the 2024 Assembly polls verdict turned out to be such that he could not resist the claim of the BJP, his Sena's coalition partner, to the post of CM.
But this time Shinde wants his pound of flesh in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) from the BJP which bagged 89 out of the 227 BMC seats to become the largest single party in the civic body. If Shinde once stepped back from the top post of the State and become number two, this is his time to wrest the country's top city's mayoral post in lieu of what he thinks to be the great sacrifice he made after 2024 polls, to enable Devendra Fadnavis to become Maharashtra Chief Minister once again.
Fractured verdict
Shinde's current hotel move has also led to speculations about the possibility of his Sena members in the new BMC joining forces with the rival Sena faction led by Uddhav Thackeray. This faction of Shiv Sena (UBT) has not only won a good 65 BMC wards but is also in coalition with Udhhav's cousin Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). It has also got six of its members elected to the Corporation.
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Congress too has 24 councillors in its kitty.
So, the verdict is fractured and leaves only little scope for existing BJP-Shiv Sena coalition to take the risk of fighting each other over the post of Mayor or even Deputy Mayor. The best option for the ruling coalition is to come to terms with each other, instead of fighting over Maratha and non-Maratha Mayor.
Nevertheless, hotel politics indicates that everything may not be fine or in order even after the ruling coalition's won the most coveted municipal corporation of the country jointly.
Ironically, the electoral campaign for BMC that began with promises to change the lot of poor in Mumbai has once again ended up in hotel-hopping of the elected representatives like in other elections in the province as also at various places in the country.
